This world is inhabited by creatures that we call pokemon. People and pokemon live together by supporting each other, but now the scourge threatens the safety of the entire region. Kohaku has become a dangerous place, where children stay at home and only brave souls go adventuring.
Welcome to KOHAKU. Come for the nightmares. Stay for the tea and crumpets.
The season is SUMMER. It is easy for survivors to forage for food from the land, as there are entire abandoned farms ready for harvest. On the downside, you can smell the corpses.
swarms
GRAND OPENING !
Welcome to KOHAKU REGION's grand opening! If you're interested in joining, come check out our grand opening giveaway!
She'd abandoned camp to scout out the area. Neo had done the same in Ceres Forest, but for all the woods around Lake Pax, this wasn't Ceres Forest. She wasn't just being paranoid this time.
She could still see the remains of the building through an opening in the trees sometimes, but for the most part, the Pax Institute seemed far away. Somehow, that made her feel unsafe. Maybe it was just because J wasn't around. ...Safety in numbers, after all.
In theory, she was patrolling--guarding the area. This was in pretty deep theory as she flitted from one shadow to the next, doing her best to stay out of sight, like some scared little woodland creature. She liked to think that she felt no fear though. She liked to think that she put fear behind when she joined Eos.
Neo wasn't sure if she was out here looking for a fight or a just looking for a good place to run and hide.
agents were just as human as hadean pokémon were still pokémon. iskander knew that fact; he played with strays and real pokémon alike, but found pity for those who were not loved. creatures missing an arm, or an eye.
iskander sat by the lake's side, and cautiously dropped an old rod into the lake by the institute's side. he hummed a small tune to himself; mother said it'd get the fish to come, to take the bait. he hummed again, running a hand through his spiky hair when a particularly warm breeze gusted past him.
he sneezed. strange. hadn't the breeze been warm?
the man wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. no-one saw, right? he turned back to the bobbing fishing rod, and waited. the lake was peaceful, and no scourge had complained of anything, either. hyde had been pretty nice about letting him fish instead of hunting other pokémon down.
he heard footsteps, turned, and saw neo. "good day," he said; he would have tipped his hat if he had one. iskander grinned slightly, before turning back to his book he'd brought along for the day. 'wind in the willows', said the title. looked interesting; he'd nicked it off the library last he went.
iskander flipped to page one and started reading. ooh, a badger.
She froze when she heard a voice. (Some people might've jumped or yelped, but Neo had a better survival instinct than that.) One hand had gone for a pokeball before she even realized that the voice had been 1) perfectly polite, and 2) hardly threatening. The latter point was as concerning as it was comforting; no non-threatening innocent bystanders survived for long at Lake Pax.
Relaxing a little--only a little--she turned around. And frowned. She'd left J back at the Institute, but she swore this was the splitting image.
Neo blinked.
...That couldn't be him. That had been a grin. She'd seen J smile before, probably more than her fair share of times, but it'd never happened unprompted. He smiled when he meant it (she liked that about him); it was never a courtesy. And the book? She'd met J in a library, but she hadn't ever seen him reading since.
"You look familiar, but I don't think I know you," she said, hands stuffed in her pockets and one of them still holding a pokeball. "One of those faces?"
"hm -- oh," iskander shrugged, snapping his book shut. the badger had been saying something rather interesting to the mole. something about an adventure, he thought. it'd be nice to go on an adventure on his own -- but ever since he'd left juno alongside hyde, things hadn't been quite as he'd imagined. people asked him questions that he never wanted to answer, but oh well.
"i don't know," sighed the agent, placing the book by his side as he stood up to stand next to the lakeside. "who do i look like?" he looked exactly like J, except for the fact that he was a whole lot more chattier, and perhaps even happier. more divulging with his emotions, too.
the old rod quivered and his gaze snapped back to it instantly. he quickly sat down and started reeling in his catch -- it seemed rather exciting to him, to wonder what was on the other end of the line. "could you get me that box?" he asked, jerking his head towards the crate with ice in it, "please? i think i've caught something!"
"A friend," she answered. Neo took a few steps closer, watchful gaze never leaving Iskander's face. The resemblance was uncanny. Correction: the resemblance was disturbing. She never expected to see expressions running so freely on that face.
For a moment, she didn't move, but then she shrugged. Leaving Icarus' pokeball in her pocket, she took the crate with both hands and brought it over to him, popping the top open after she set it down.
"I wouldn't eat anything out of that water. Virus and all." She gave that advice in earnest, no one really knew how the virus traveled, but then she paused. Thalia had contacted her earlier with bad news. Turns out humans may be immune to infection, but that didn't mean they could be trusted.
the lake water splashed and tossed the old rod, but iskander managed to pull his catch out from the water. it was a magikarp, unaffected by the scourge, strangely. it hadn't yet experienced discoloration or any sort of special coloration (as if it were vaccinated), and looked completely normal except for particularly curly mustaches. "thanks," iskander panted, dropping the struggling fish into the crate and shutting it firmly.
the carp continued to flap about in the cooler box, but it couldn't escape. the agent rapped the top of the box, and it struggled even more. it wasn't dead yet; perfect for sashimi, but iskander's thoughts were cut short at neo's words. slightly worried, he glanced at her. "you're right," he admitted, "but it looks fine, though? it's not easy to travel through here without eating anything."
he stared at the crate and its fervent shaking. the magikarp probably was splashing about in it, curly staches and all.
"pity, i was looking forward to some sashimi," he said, then shook his head at neo's question. "yes -- well, i'm from kohaku, but i don't exactly live here." his gaze swept over the lake and its deserted state, at the institute destroyed by scourge pokémon. "i'm from juno. sometimes i wonder if i did the right thing, coming out all the way to help people."
"Berries and roots are safest to eat. Pokemon can already be carrying the vaccine before showing signs of it. Like any other virus. Think HIV." Neo decided that'd be a good place to shut up about the finer details of virus contamination, because no one (except other researchers) cared to hear the scientific nitty-gritty behind everything.
Juno was a long way from here. And if he meant to help people... he could've stayed in Nerio, and failing that, Bacchus was an obvious choice.
She glanced around, just in case she missed a traveling companion of his. "I don't see any people here for you to help. You must have passed Bacchus to get here from Juno though. Why not stay there?"
"you're right," iskander admitted, and reluctantly opened the crate to let the magikarp go. it seemed to be still very much alive and quickly leapt into the water with the ferocity of a potential gyarados. for good measure, the agent dumped the rest of the water and ice into the lake as well. he wondered if he ought to throw the crate, but he didn't have many crates left. he let it sit by his side and would decide its fate later, he thought.
"i've been around nerio as well," said the agent, "bacchus too, but it's been oddly deserted these days. haven't really seen people actively fighting, but nerio's been a good place to help people fighting in bellona hills." he grinned, remembering thalia and her encounter with cameron. "i'd stay in nerio, but i figured i'd take a chance here, and i guess i met you?"
he glanced her over. "you don't look like you've been battling scourge though," he remarked, "but would you like a potion anyway?" the agent held one out, smiling at neo.
"You must've missed the fighting. I know Thalia was battling outside of Nerio recently. She told me about the strangest thing she saw one fight.," she said without any particular inflection. Neo's face was expressionless.
"Yes. You met me. And I haven't been fighting--more's the pity. I've been... busy." That did give her a vague sense of guilt. She'd dissected--vivisected in one case--an upwards of four scourge pokemon. Everyone had been bringing corpses to her. At first that'd made her feel useful, but... the complete lack of new discoveries made her feel useless.
She looked at the potion, looked the agent in the eyes, then back at the potion. Neo smiled, and it didn't meet her eyes. "Thanks," she said woodenly, taking the potion. Then Neo asked, "I'm Neo. What's your name?"
so thalia had a friend, and she'd been sort of lying while talking to him. never mind, then; iskander knew now, and he knew that thalia had been going around talking about them and their ability to communicate with scourge pokémon. that was something he'd briefly discussed with the pink-haired trainer as well, and he wondered what the other two (neo and thalia) had been discussing in return.
"i met her in bellona, talked to her a bit. gave her a revive, too," he said. he tried to remember the other things they'd talked about -- well, there was a bout of awkward laughter, the revelation that cameron was a woman, what else, what else. iskander nodded at neo's words; it was fine not to fight. he didn't, either. he just didn't see the point in it at all.
iskander smiled. "you're welcome, neo -- i'm eltanin. delta, people call me that since it's easier, i think."
"We shared a tent once. Sometimes she calls and I do some thinking for her."
Suspicions confirmed--although there actually were a surprising number of people in Kohaku that seemed to live just to hand out free items--Neo was silent. She had a lot to say, a lot ask, but she wasn't sure she could trust his answers. Hah. Who was she kidding? She didn't trust any stranger at all, not even one that wore J's face.
"How do you know so much? Thalia said she wished she'd asked."
iskander nodded. connections were probably everything in light of the scourge; it made sense to have people band together and all. what was left of those who did not, were the rejected ones -- he supposed he was one of them, like the stray pokémon and hadean ones, too. "about?" he asked.
he supposed that having an eidetic memory could come in troublesome at times. he remembered too much, noticed the finer print and remembered that, too. maybe neo wanted to know something about the agents; it was knowledge he was willing to divulge. in no way or form had the scourge actively stopped him from doing so. cameron probably was more secretive than he was.
iskander? he enjoyed sharing knowledge. like reading, y'know, it was fun to read with everyone.
Thalia actually never specified, but Neo knew what she herself was curious about. "About Cameron. About people that work with the scourge. ...And why. Why would anyone ally with the scourge?"
She took a step back. In fact, she took several steps back, not even bothering to disguise her wariness. Her hands didn't tremble in the slightest, but Neo was still nervous when she stuffed her hands into her pockets again.
"Are you a trainer?" She figured he was. That, or he was batshit insane. No one stopped for a little fishing break at Lake Pax, not anymore.
"i don't know what happened with cameron," iskander said, rather slowly. he really didn't know beyond her past and what she had done to got the scourge's attention on her -- she even got a camerupt, while he had a metang, and that was it. "she's probably got a lot of motivation. when she beat me, she mentioned something about the dawn of a new age, and that i should share her viewpoint about it." he shook his head.
"that might be a question you want to ask her." iskander glanced over the lake, and considered throwing the old rod into the water again for the sake of. he decided against it, and pulled the old rod back on land, then placed it into the crate. "and no, i'm not. eos rejected my application, but i'm reapplying." he could've sworn that thalia had asked him the same question, too.
he laughed, throwing his hands up in the air. "it's weird, right. coming out to the middle of the place without pokémon, or a friend."
Neo listened, quietly. She didn't trust him, but as far as she could tell, Delta had no reason to lie to her either. Yet this wasn't like Thalia coming to her to exchange information freely--fully, with trust that the two of them had at least one mission in common. This felt like a battle itself, a series of feints and dodges.
Dawn of a new age... what new age? There'd be nothing left. She'd never met Cameron, but from what Thalia had told her... well, she'd still not really be able to pick Cameron out of a crowd until she saw a black camerupt.
Her entire body froze, forcing back a shudder, when he laughed. He sounded like J too. It occurred to her she'd never heard him laugh before.
"It is weird," she agreed. "How'd Cameron beat you if you don't have any pokemon? With her fists?"
